The WebSphere Migration Tools – The Hidden Gem

Well then, it comes as no surprise that one of my first posts will be on a WebSphere related topic. I meant to write about this earlier but had no time over the last few months, but a recent project required me to work with a client on a WebSphere migration and go over the tools and their usefulness with them – so I decided to go back and briefly talk about the WebSphere Migration Tools and how they can me useful not only for migrations …

Where to get them:

The tools are made up of three parts, all of them are available at the IBM WebSphere/Liberty Developer site: https://developer.ibm.com/wasdev/

Just go to the [DOWNLOADS] area and do a search on [MIGRATION] and you can download them all.

Note1:
Just be aware of one thing - if you install Eclipse (needed for all tools except the Binary command line tool) you can also just download them from IBM's Marketplace/Update site inside of Eclipse and install it directly - here is the URL for that site:
https://public.dhe.ibm.com/ibmdl/export/pub/software/websphere/wasdev/updates/wamt/MigrationToolkit/

Note2:
Just make sure you also install a Java J2EE environment inside of Eclipse as the tools require that to run correctly ....

The Tool Set

Basically there are four tools:

WebSphere Application Server Migration Toolkit

You need Eclipse to run this – it will analyze applications in the context of different migration scenarios (source system and target system) . This is the list of scenarios it can help you with: This tool will help you do most of what you need to do ….

Cloud Migration Tool

WebSphere Version to Version Application Migration Tool

Apache Tomcat to WebSphere Application Migration Tool

JBoss to WebSphere Application Migration Tool

Oracle to WebSphere Application Migration Tool

WebLogic to WebSphere Application Migration Tool

Apache Tomcat to Liberty Configuration Migration Tool

WebSphere Configuration Migration Tool: JBoss

WebSphere Configuration Migration Tool: WebLogic

WebSphere Configuration Migration Tool: WebSphere to Liberty

WebSphere Configuration Migration Tool for IBM Cloud

This will also require Eclipse – the main difference is that it only uses the cloud as a target system – I have tested itonce or twice and it creates a great clone of your current system in IBM’s cloud infrastructure. You need to have an active cloud/Bluemix account to be able to use this.

WebSphere Configuration Migration Tool

This is my go-to tool to see if I can “just upgrade” a server/servers as is or if I will have problems …. the tool gives you a wsadmin command to run on the originating server (if it is WebSphere) that give you an output file – that you then import and the rest is “magic”.

Migration Toolkit for Application Binaries

A command line tool that will quickly analyze existing applications – it will tell you quickly if an existing app will run on a newer (or different) platform and/or what problems might exist.

Note: I often use this tool to analyse apps when trouble-shooting them on WebSphere – it’s not just useful for a migration/upgrade! I have often used this tool to figure out what Java jars are in an application and if there are any old opensource (and possibly incompatible) versions inside. Try this with the [-inventory] switch and then hand the report to the developer ….

Other Resource:

This is a great presentation on the tools and how they work. It is a bit long, but it will give you most of the details you need to get a start with these tools and learn how to use them. They are quite straight forward and not hard to use, it is the results they give you that cause the prolonged episodes of head scratching ….